Knights, guilds and lay societies
Catholic Worker Movement
Catholic Worker · CW · Houses of Hospitality
Founded 1933Lay Catholic movement of fully autonomous communities with no central governing authority, no headquarters, and no formal membership. It has no canonical status and describes itself as a Christian anarchist movement. Individual houses may or may not be separately incorporated.
A few minutes' work
Email request. No alms are asked.
Open their pageLook up the nearest community in the directory and contact that house directly, because each one decides for itself who lives and works there; there is no national office to apply to.
Members have a portal to sign in to.
Started by Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin in New York in 1933, the Catholic Worker is less an organization than a way of living that keeps being taken up. People open a house of hospitality, share their home with those who have nowhere else to go, live simply and often in voluntary poverty, do the works of mercy by hand, and in many houses take part in protest against war and injustice. About two dozen communities run farms. There is nothing to join in the usual sense: you visit a house, you help, and if it fits you stay. Most houses survive on donations and the outside jobs of the people living there.
What you promise
No dues, no application, no degrees, no central oversight. What a house asks of you depends entirely on that house, and for live-in members it usually means shared household work, a small or no stipend, voluntary simplicity, and consensus decision-making with the rest of the community. Volunteers from the surrounding neighborhood help without any commitment at all.
What the Church attaches
No chaplaincy structure and no attached indulgences. In practice many houses have Mass, prayer, and the Catholic Worker tradition of clarification of thought evenings. Dorothy Day's cause for canonization is a focus for many in the movement, and the Aims and Means document functions as its spiritual charter.
Enrollment checked 2026-10-22. Details change without notice and parish practice varies. Confirm before relying on this sheet.